The New York Times Co. is threatening to shut down the Boston Globe if it doesn’t get concessions from the newspaper’s unions — which is causing media observers to speculate anew about what life would be like without a major newspaper in the region. Coincidentally, Globe editor Marty Baron gave a speech on Thursday about the future of journalism (hat tip to Media Nation). Among other things, he talked about the kind of reporting that is rarely done outside of well-funded print newspapers, using the example of a 13-year-old fire victim who had already suffered from neglect and abuse. As Baron said: 

The story elicited an outpouring of sympathy, but fortunately there was more than that. There was action.

The child welfare agency instituted reforms that would affect the placement and monitoring of about 500 children a year. Shortly, the governor asked the state’s child advocate to launch an investigation. The advocate issued a report in December describing fundamental failures by the state and calling for better training for social workers, improved information-sharing with law enforcement, and more comprehensive documentation of neglect and abuse. The governor pledged to follow through.

Not surprisingly, I’m a big fan of web-based journalism, but I also worry about whether this kind of story will disappear along with “dinosaur” newspapers. I also wonder whether the disappearance of the Globe would, to some degree, nudge the state’s political attitudes toward the right — or at least toward the kind of anti-government anger associated with talk radio.

I’m not talking about the Globe‘s editorials or op-ed pages, which probably don’t convert many readers from conservative to liberal. I’m referring to heavily reported news stories that take on systemic problems in our state and provide a counterweight to the idea that government is, by definition, wasteful and meddlesome.

It doesn’t take a lot of reporting resources to take a shot at local or state government. The understaffed Herald or even a one-person blog can spread the news about an eye-popping salary for a public employee, a silly-sounding arts program getting a grant from the state, or a government office with bathroom fixtures that are a little bit fancier than they need to be. Those stories are going to be around with or without the Globe.  

Stories about neglect or indifference by the government are a lot harder to report. It takes a lot of time and manpower to investigate how our state prison system does such a poor job preventing suicides, how our small-claims courts are “stacked against the average consumer“, or how our Boston-centric state tends to overlook poverty in western Massachusetts. Those are the kind of problems that are invisible to most of us — not like the things we encounter every day on the way to work, like surly MBTA employees or state highway crews that don’t seem to being doing anything at the moment we drive by. And if there’s no Globe to cover them, those hidden problems aren’t going to magically vanish.